Thinking Aloud
This simple example shows the human ego independence from other individuals and the public consciousness as a whole. Of course, other’s evaluation is important for us, but it isn’t final. It is no surprise, if one thinks his or her personality low estimation by others is unfair, however, if things are the vice versa, he / she may disagree as well. Praises from people near and far may be insufficient, for example, to make an artist or writer believe in his / her talent. This simple example can lead us to other presumptions. The mechanisms of persuasion may be useful to change the opinion of an interlocutor, but they fail, for example, as a means of a psychological influence on an alcoholic to convince him or her to stop drinking.
Self-objectification of a person in the world is countered by the reality deobjectification according to Karl Marx. On the one hand, the product of such deobjectification is our own Ego, which contains various fragments of training and life experience in an ideal form. On the other hand, if we assume we aren’t robots, but acting individuals and objectify ourselves to reach a goal – in other words, we’ve motives of such activities, then the end of this deobjectification shall be a result. This is something that is going to bring some pleasure, or, using everyday language, be welcomed by all the subsystems of our minds. First of all, even if we confine a human to the narrative cogito, he or she continues to be a unique individual. The population of a country is taught and brought up according to some conventional established rules.
Hochschild, Arlie R. 2003. The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. The book is a bona fide analysis of what its author calls selling emotions. According to this book we can imaging most internal traits of a human mind, such as joy or pleasure, under control of the narrative ego and even certain outside (hereby management) needs. Check your smile motto isn’t just for supermarket workers. It’s for nearly every sphere of public life. Resorting to what Karl Marx once said, we have to objectify our thoughts constantly (Verdinglichung, eng. Reification). It means turn some of our mental vibes to things (material and ideal).
À la guerre comme à la guerre ( at war as at war). Let’s try to use it as an epigraph to our further discourse. Indeed, the conditions of a certain society or community give an answer to the possible borders of the narrative ego control over the whole human mind structure. Extremal conditions and strict system of social control practiced at war makes a person endure hardships and obey every clear order from others. The picture of a war, which is well understood due to the cinema, is a good example of the idea of the narrative ego’s total and absolute control of the whole mental structure. The parallel shows some other things too.
The above-mentioned system can be enriched with two more elements – affective cogito and well-known to us reward center. Then we’ve a sound enough and quite convenient structure to analyze the addictive behavior. The affective cogito we can define (following the logic of above-mentioned Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground) as a simply independent choice, a counterpart of a rationally advantageous choice. Unfortunately, the English translation of the novel doesn’t fully render the figurative meaning in the Russian original and makes it closer to the strict scientific terminology. What’s a simply independent choice? Firstly, the simplicity isn’t only about something easy to understand, it’s something that can’t be divided to any components. Secondly, such a choice or better say the manifestation of our desires (which is a more accurate translation of the original meaning in Russian) is hereby considered independent from socially programmed narrative cogito.